For perhaps the first time that night, the three shinigami knew without any shred of doubt they were on the right track, and their mission objective close at hand. When their party reached the fifth floor of the basement of the Castle of Candles, they found themselves at a set of heavy, metal sliding doors that towered above their heads, just as those that had prevented their progress on their journey by elevator.
The difference now was that these doors had been pried wide open. The handprint recognition console to the side hung askew and sparking from some manner of forced entry. "Fluffy's been here, all right," Kira said, and no one complained of the obviousness of her statement.
The doors opened onto a high-ceilinged hallway, with monochrome crystalline walls into which vertical banners of geometric, organic designs had been carved. Lights mounted in the vault shinedne down pale light in cold icicles that pierced the almost physical darkness; and fluorescent rods ran from wall to wall beneath the transparent flooring, bathing their faces in eerie uplighting, measuring their progress as though in musical bars. Their footsteps falling on the hard floor were the only sounds in the large chamber, and even then made hardly an echo, the sound swallowed up by the room almost as soon as it was produced.
When they came to the next set of doors, massive bronze ones on hinges, they were not surprised to see them flung open as well. Thick discs of jade green clay the size of tires lay broken and shattered all around it. "This door was sealed. . . ." Kira said to herself, examining the remainders of one.
"Hakushaku warned us about this," Wakaba said as she surveyed the scene. "You would think such an important area of the Castle of Candles would be much better protected than this, though."
"This is a high-level safety seal spell. Even you and I would have a difficult time breaking it without the proper counter-spell, if we managed to dent it at all."
"Impossible." It was Terazuma who spoke up. "Why would a minor demon — master of delusion or not — have the resources to break it and not us?"
"That's exactly what I was thinking," Kira said. She regarded them meaningfully. "We have to be prepared for the possibility Fluffy had help."
"You mean like those fluctuations they were talking about in the kappa village," said Wakaba.
The exorcist nodded. "More or less. According to the security footage they started appearing about the same time Fluffy staged his big escape. Coincidence? I don't think so. If he has some alien force at his disposal, we could be in more trouble than we both bargained for."
Tsuzuki felt something float over his shoulder. He turned around and looked up, and caught a glimpse of a mechanical eye drifting through the air, blinking a steady red light. "Then maybe this isn't the right time to tell you," he said slowly, "but we're being watched."
Just as he said so, he saw another come into view, drawn to the newcomers like sharks to blood. The other three looked up, Kira furrowing her brows.
"Security cameras?" Wakaba said, trying to be optimistic.
"Sentinels, more like," said Terazuma. "The question is, whose side are they on?"
Whatever the answer was, Kira tightened her fists in anxiety. "Fluffy's going to know we're coming. Come on! We must find the firewall!"
With that she took off down the corridor, the shinigami close on her heels. The walls around them were imposing like the unadorned walls of a ziggurat, constructed on such an awesome, monstrous scale with the purpose, perhaps, to evoke just that feeling. The path seemed to be curving in a gentle spiral, and the occasional flying camera was drawn to their presence, but they paid no attention as time was of the essence. Like the line in front of an amusement park attraction, they had the irritating feeling they could not have gone far despite the distance they had traveled.
At last a low roaring like the sound of waves crashing to shore made them slow their pace. When they turned the final corner and came face to face with the source of the noise, the shinigami stopped and stared.
"I take it that's the firewall," said Terazuma.
And sure enough, extending in either direction before them was a wall of flame, a solid row of pillars of golden-green fire rising and hissing continuously en masse from the floor toward the ceiling. There was no apparent way over or around it, and the cigarette held close to the wall for a light proved it was no mere illusion. The heat incinerated it, much to Terazuma's disappointment.
"Then if we follow it we should find Fluffy!" his partner said.
Suddenly it felt like they were missing a member of their party. Tsuzuki looked around and counted two besides himself. "Where's Tsukiori?"
"Sneaky bastard bailed on us!" Terazuma hissed.
They had no time to ponder her disappearance, however, as just then a low rumbling split the steady roar of the flames, rattling them where they stood, a low staccato like a giant's peals of laughter. It congealed into a sinister voice, the words reverberating in the thick air of the chamber: "So. These are the shinigami they sent to capture me?"
The flames surged and smoked black in one spot along the wall, and the three stepped back as something began to take shape there. A shadowy figure shaped like a seed and easily two stories tall developed, then unfurled two leathery wings. As it stretched and accumulated mass, they could make out a thick, chiseled body with hairy haunches and abnormally long forelegs ending in a raptor's talons. An elongated head sat on a serpentine neck, out of which the horizontal pupils of goat eyes focused on them, and smoke emanated from the toothy, plesiosauric jaws. Two twisted horns like twin towers rose parallel from the back of the skull.
The thing almost seemed to smile as it looked down at them the way a man looks at an insect. "Fools," it said. "You would have done better to stay in bed then try my patience on this night of the eclipse."
"We meet at last . . . Fluffy," Tsuzuki growled, staring him down.
And what a misnomer it was.
The demon let out a snort of disgust. "That is the name my peers call me — wankers, the lot! But among mortals I am known as the Ninki-Nanka — the dreaded deinocheirus — the Kikiyaon proper of the upper Gambia, devourer of souls — Baphomet! Fall down and prostrate yourselves properly before my awesome presence and perhaps I shall take pity on your immortal souls."
"On the contrary," Terazuma yelled back, the old platitudes from his days on the force resurfacing, "if anyone's gonna be crying uncle, it's you. The gig is up, Fluffy. You've had your fun, now you're coming with us. We won't fall for your parlor tricks. Don't make this any harder for yourself."
"So that's how you want to play, is it?" The demon inhaled deeply and rose on his hindquarters. The backlight from the firewall created a sickly halo around him. He reached out his clawed hands to form the shape of a bowl, and as the three watched the space inside began to quiver violently. "Then let's see how you fare against the vengeful spirits your kind laid low. 'That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons, even death may die'. . . ."
And as he said so, a gang of zombies materialized between his hands.
The shinigami, needless to say, were by now ready and experienced; and bringing their respective blades and firearms to bear made quick work of the zombies.
"You'll have to do a lot better than that, Fluffy," Tsuzuki said, a lopsided grin on his lips, "if you're going to defeat the man who took down two of Ashtaroth's finest."
The demon started. "Tsuzuki Asato? It can't be!" But even that reaction did not last long, and another puff of black smoke curled out of the sides of his mouth as he narrowed his eyes. "No matter," he growled. "I have plenty more tricks up my sleeves."
Terazuma shook his fist. "Bring it on!"
"With pleasure." Fluffy opened his jaws and flapped his wings, blowing a blast of supercharged particles their way. The shinigami raised their arms to shield their faces from the sting, but none of them need say even the manticores had had fouler breath than this.
"Wait a second, you guys," Wakaba said over the din of it, grabbing Tsuzuki's jacket. "It's a fake!"
"What?"
"It's not the real Fluffy. It's just a holographic illusion!"
"What makes you say that?" her partner asked. The hot wind pushing them back and rattling their hastily raised shields was real enough.
"His wings are clipping through the firewall!" Wakaba said, as though it were perfectly obvious.
"So what?"
"Sew buttons! That wall is impenetrable, right? So why would he be able to move in and out of it at will unless he's already broken through — and in which case there wouldn't be a firewall anymore and we wouldn't still be here?"
Sure enough, when the two men looked closely they noticed that parts of the demon's body seemed to vanish inconsistently through the wall. She was right. The illusion was shattered. "Plus, this isn't anything your average poltergeist couldn't pull off—"
They leaped out of the way and a volley of concentrated energy hurled right at them, as though specifically in answer to her challenge, left a shallow, smoking crater in the floor where they had just been. Illusion or not, it still packed a punch. And Fluffy cackled on in glee.
—
A hundred yards away, the real Fluffy was not feeling so confident. Those shinigami were showing no signs of being scared off, and the donut hole he had managed to produce so far in the firewall was not getting any larger. He would have to focus his energy if it were to open at any faster a rate, and he needed that strength and concentration to maintain his shadow and keep the enemy at bay. It was some catch-22 he was in. If worse came to it, he supposed he could always pull his disappearing act—
"What a sad piece of work," came a cold voice at his back, sending a shiver down it and interrupting his thoughts. "You've had all night to crack this thing and this is all the farther you've gotten?"
Fluffy steamed. It was one thing to have let a human mortal sneak up on him, but that was thin ice on which to tread.
He turned and glared daggers up at the young woman in clerical collar who stood there. "Kira! What are you doing here?"
"You stole the words right from my mouth. Hopefully that's all you've stolen so far. Isn't it past your bedtime, Fluffy?"
Fluffy snarled. He detested being talked down to more than anything, and being Lord Ashtaroth's personal attack dog she must have known precisely what buttons to push.
He laughed, however, when she reached for a pistol. "Feh. What are you going to do? The damage is done."
"By order of King Enma, I hereby place you under arrest. If you attempt to resist capture I will not hesitate—"
"What, you're going to shoot me? You know firearms are useless against me!"
As though taking that as an invitation, Kira pulled out a clear plastic watergun and pulled the trigger. A stream of water arched out with a hiss and hit Fluffy square on the side of the head. The ruckus he raised was horrible.
"Ah! It burns-ssssshhh! Get it off, get it off!" He flailed his little arms manically.
The stream ran out and Kira paused a moment, like she had all the time in the world to stand there and torment him. "Had enough?"
"Screw you! I didn't do anything to deserve— Ah-hssss! . . ."
He scampered off this time she shot at him, the back of his head sizzling as he hobbled away as fast as his stubby legs would carry him — which just happened to be in a beeline toward the shinigami who were jogging in the opposite direction. He ran right smack into Terazuma's shins.
"Hello, what's this?" the man said, picking the biting and twisting demon up by the scruff of his neck. He did a double-take, then looked at Kira. "Tell me this isn't who I think it is."
"It is," she said.
"Fluffy," Terazuma purred, glowering down at the demon in triumph. "What an appropriate name."
For the demon hanging in his grasp was essentially no more than an animated stuffed animal, a juvenile Krampus by the looks of him: a ten-pound ball of lavender fur from the bottom of which protruded two cloven feet and a short tasseled tail, and from the top two stubby, harmless knobs for horns. His face had none of the length or scaliness of his more menacing manifestation, and in fact lacked any menacing qualities, except perhaps for the snarl of his lips and the futile hatred in his black button eyes.
"Not much to look at, is he?" Tsuzuki poked him in the ribs, and Fluffy nearly took off the offending finger.
"We heard the commotion," Wakaba said, managing to tear her eyes away from the little beast. "It sounded like a dying goat."
"Holy water," Kira said. She raised the water gun up to the light and checked its contents before holstering it. "It works especially well against the lower echelons whose MO won't mature for thousands of years."
"'Lower ech—' I don't have to take this—" Fluffy began to kick.
"You keep a good grip on him, Terazuma-san. He's a slippery one."
As she said so, she fished out a pet collar from some pocket in her tunic. On it was a little brass box that rattled with the movement. Fluffy's eyes went wide when he saw it.
"A relic now? What is it, the phalange of a burnt martyr? Yes, just heap on the abuse, why don't you. —What is this, pick-on-Fluffy day?" the demon whined, twisting back and forth in outrage. "Did someone put a sign on my back or something? As if I didn't get enough of this from the guys back home, I have to take it from you ministry goons too?"
"You should consider yourself fortunate to get off so easy after what you pulled," Tsuzuki told him. "You have King Enma to thank for that. He wants you unharmed, which is more than what we shinigami usually do."
Fluffy closed his eyes and scrunched up his face as the inevitable collar closed around his throat. It could not have hurt nearly as much as he wanted them to believe, but he did calm visibly as though from a strong dose of tranquilizer once it was secure.
Satisfied, Kira put her hands on her hips. "Why don't you tell them what you were planning to do, Fluffy."
The demon crossed his arms over his chest. He tried his best to thoroughly ignore her, and the fact that he was still in Terazuma's grasp.
"We know all about you vain attempts to crack the firewall," Tsuzuki told him. "And, was it worth it, for a hole you can barely fit your little finger through? Did you really think you would be able to outwit Enma?"
"Fools," said Fluffy. "Of course it was worth the pains! Sure, that fairy upstairs probably told you something terrible would happen once I broke through. But do you have any idea what lies on the other side of that firewall?"
The shinigami exchanged glances. "Why don't you enlighten us, as you seem so eager to do," said Kira.
Fluffy smirked. "I can't."
"You have no idea yourself, do you?"
He renewed his glare at that. "I know it holds treasures beyond your wildest imagination — treasures so powerful they warrant such ridiculous and redundant security measures as this. So I ask you, what could be so powerful, so dangerous that Enma would want to keep a secret?"
"I don't know." Terazuma shrugged facetiously. "Maybe a supercomputer that houses Enmacho's most classified files?"
"Heh." Fluffy snickered. "Of course you would say something like that. Your minuscule human mind wouldn't be able to fathom the reality of it."
"And whatever it is, you were just going to waltz in and steal it," said Kira.
"Yes! And I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you meddling shinigami!"
"Fluffy is known in the underworld for his kleptomaniacal tendencies," Kira explained to the others. "You hear all about nature spirits having a penchant for petty thievery, irresistible attraction to shiny objects, that sort of thing, but it's rather embarrassing for a demon to be engaging in such degradingly impulsive behavior—"
"I'm right here," Fluffy interrupted impatiently. "You don't have to talk about me in the third-person."
Kira leaned over, bringing her face close to his. "Then answer me this, you louse. You weren't given those video games by a colleague. You stole them. Am I right?"
"Yeah," the demon said reluctantly, trying anxiously to avoid meeting her gaze, "I did, all right. I wanted to maximize my profiteering potential, so I snatched a few while he wasn't looking. Those who are on the bottom rungs of these pyramid schemes never make as much as the people on top. Besides, those spoiled high school kids don't know whether they're shelling out dough for bootlegs or the real thing. . . . But you gotta believe me: I didn't know they were cursed!"
"Whether that's true remains to be seen. Fingering your supplier is the only way to put this case behind you."
"Do I have to?" Fluffy sighed. "Man . . . He's gotta be pissed at me as it is. We're not exactly near each other in class, you know. I'll be branded a rat!"
"That depends on the grace of Lord Enma. Do the right thing and he may just clear your name. Isn't that what you want?"
Fluffy scowled. "I'm a demon, for chrissake. I hate doing the right thing."
—
"What I'd like to know," said Wakaba, "is how Fluffy opened up the portal that released the zombies into the Castle. Or for that matter, bypassed the security of this level. Given the way he attacked us when we first encountered the firewall, there's no way those doors could have been opened by the same being."
"What do you mean?" said an indignant Fluffy. "Of course it was done by one and the same being: me! With my decades of experience cracking seals and spells of various natures and degrees, the locked-away recesses of the Castle of Candles were a cinch, whether behind doors material or metaphysical. Once the undead were released, I received no trouble from the residents of the basement. Those who did not run in fear were converted to my side by the darkness that I had unleashed. At last they realized the folly of serving a weak master like Hakushaku." He puffed out his chest and looked at the shinigami through lazy eyes. "I was merely holding out on you. Despite my best efforts, the firewall remained a conundrum to me and I needed all my energy to concentrate on weakening it. If I had thought you three were such a threat, I would have shown you what I was truly made of forthwith."
"I don't buy that for a second," Kira said, playing the bad cop with vigor. "I know the way you operate, Fluffy, and I know you don't have it in you to pull off something of this magnitude on your own. You must have had help. So, what was it? Was there an accomplice who broke those seals for you?"
Fluffy recoiled at that, either the implication of his shortcomings or the direction in which she was headed. "I don't use accomplices," he said, watching her carefully.
"A machine, then? Was it a device that allowed you to escape from your holdings and open the portal? Something that doesn't belong to you?"
He turned defensive.
"If I did, I certainly wouldn't tell you!"
"Besides," said Tsuzuki, "if he had something that valuable, he would have used it against the wall by now."
Fluffy snickered at him. "Idiot. That's impossible. That wall resists everything I have thrown at it. A device would be no different. I'm telling you, whatever is on the other side of it must exist on a separate plane of warped space o-or something! When the portals started appearing—"
He clamped his hands over his mouth; but it was too late. He had said too much.
"Wait a minute," Kira said. "I thought you just said you opened the portals. Now you're implying you didn't?"
"A-am I?" Fluffy twiddled his thumbs.
"You know, I think you're right." A touch of sarcasm entered Terazuma's voice as it all started to come together. "It seems I do remember Fluffy telling us he was responsible for the whole mess."
"I am," came the defiant answer.
"Then which was it? A glorious rebellion against Enma and the underworld establishment, or a stroke of dumb luck? Because I don't see how it could be both." He shrugged. "Oh well. If you want to take responsibility that bad we'll play along. It's no skin off my nose. I seem to recall a new method of torture His Honor is dying to try out, and this would make you the perfect candidate."
Fluffy let out a sound between a squeak and a gulp.
"And," Wakaba was eager to add, "it wouldn't be a complete loss because when you finally did return, it would be with that big bad reputation you've always wanted."
"All right, all right!" Fluffy said, holding out his hands to shush them. "So I fibbed a little, I admit it. I did use the portals to my advantage once I had gotten free and figured out the pattern they exhibited in their comings and goings. Once I found I had some level of control over them, I pitted them against the doors coming in here; then, when that was successful, against the firewall — and you know how well that worked out. I even brought the zombies through, and I might have sicced a few of the basement's residents on you guys. . . . But anything else that might've happened to you was entirely not my doing. Okay?"
"I don't know. That sounds a little far-fetched . . ." Tsuzuki started.
"It's the truth!" He looked up at them with the sad eyes of a kicked puppy. "Promise me you won't tell my peers. I'd like to at least keep my self-respect."
"So, let me get this straight," Kira said. "It was all a stroke of dumb luck, like Terazuma-san said. Which you thought you'd take advantage of to boost your own ego."
"Please, Kira," the demon entreated her, "you don't know what it's like, to grow up among littermates with names like Pitch and Miasma. I just wanted a little respect is all. Is that so much to ask? Do you have any idea how hard it is to be taken seriously when you're Fluffy, the cute one?"
She didn't have to think about that one.
"No."
Fluffy let out an exasperated sigh. Jesus, humans could be so stubbornly dense. It was like pulling teeth, getting them to see things his way.
"I would be willing to forget this whole little episode, however," she added, "if you told us where these portals you spoke of came from so we could seal them once and for all."
Fluffy slapped his forehead. "Do I need to spell it out for you? I don't know!"
"You expect us to believe they just . . . popped up out of nowhere?" said Wakaba.
"Yes! Because that's what happened! Wasn't that part obvious?"
"I never planned for this contingency," Kira said in lower tones, leaning closer to Tsuzuki and Wakaba.
"Neither did we," said the former. "We'd been under the impression this entire time Fluffy was in some way connected to, if not personally responsible for the corruption of the basement. If we don't even know what caused it . . ."
"Then how the hell are we supposed to stop it?" Wakaba finished for him.
"What are you guys talking about?" Fluffy said loudly, twisting anxiously in Terazuma's grip to try to hear better.
The other three ignored him. "This is quite a wall we've found ourselves up against," Tsuzuki said, putting his hands on his hips.
"That's it!" said Wakaba.
The others turned to her.
"That's what that woman with the long neck said after we had eaten," she explained, looking at Kira. "'In case you run up against a wall.' Then she gave you something."
Now that she was reminded, Kira slipped her hand into her pocket to find said something. "What makes you think of that now?" Terazuma asked his partner. "I fail to see the relevance."
"Come on," Wakaba said, indicating the firewall behind them. "What bigger wall to run up against could you ask for than this?"
Needless to say, the remaining predicament of the mysterious portals that sat before them without any leads was quite an obstacle as well. How the rokurokkubi's gift could be of any help must have been what Kira was wondering as she stared at the small object sitting in her palm.
It was about the size and shape of a june bug, and seemed to be made of highly polished dark green jade. For all intents and purposes, it looked like something someone might string on a necklace and use as a charm. Of all of them, only Fluffy's face showed a look of comprehension, and he fought Terazuma even more, reaching out his stubby arms in a futile attempt to snatch the object from her hand.
"What is . . ." Tsuzuki began, leaning over for a better look.
But before he could finish that thought the object suddenly came to life. From some hidden cranny wings shot out and propelled the thing right out of Kira's hand. Before anyone could raise a hand to stop it, it was rocketing straight for the firewall, buzzing all the way and finally colliding with a gentle poof.
"Crack-brained wench!" Fluffy yelled, shaking his fist at Kira. "You've let it get away!"
"'Wench'?" Terazuma repeated. "No, you've got it . . . Wait, hold up. You mean Tsukiori's a woman?" And to think he had touched her, twice, and once rather intimately. How could he have been so oblivious?
"Yeah, what did you think she was, genius? And you're supposed to be the detective. . . ."
"You mean, you really didn't know?" Wakaba said. She let out a great big sigh of relief, jealousy evaporating, and smiling from ear to ear. "Oh, thank God. That explains so much!"
Meanwhile, rather than melting away or incinerating like Terazuma's cigarette, the bug was somehow interacting with the firewall, turning in a cog-like fashion in staccato stops and starts. "What's it doing?" Tsuzuki asked as he watched, but none of his compatriots seemed to have an answer, and Fluffy was saying nothing.
Then the mechanical dance stopped.
Without any warning, the stretch of firewall before them abruptly extinguished itself, parting around the bug like the waters of the Red Sea. It took them all by such surprise that they jumped back. Down the line on both sides the wall receded and went out like a wave rolling to shore, while below their feet came the rumble of heavy machinery and massive bodies sliding into place. The sudden disappearance of the firewall cast the space into almost complete darkness but for the eerie glow of emergency lights, punctured by the tinny sound of the bug falling to the floor.
But then with the final locking of all the organs into place, soffit lights flickered to life like stars being born out of the inky blackness, illuminating a complex that was nothing like what the shinigami might have imagined Fluffy's illusive treasure hold to be.
Immediately before them stood two immense lamassu carved of black granite, the individual feathers of their wings and the curls of their beards and thick muscles of their ox legs gleaming in the flood of light. They flanked a portal surmounted by a lotus and grinning, curvaceous humanoid figures, that evoked a strong feeling of the ancient past for the four humans who gazed up at it. Beyond the doorway they could see the monochromatic gleam of stainless steel, rising from below the floor to someplace beyond their field of vision in gigantic towers and banks. Otherwise, the chamber beyond was empty.
Once their eyes had adjusted to the light, however, and they could look more closely, they saw the steel walls were divided into a grid, and onto each rectangle there was fixed a plaque. There were no piles of dark, occult artifacts or sinister devices lying about, nor server towers with priceless computer equipment the damaging secrets of which could be divulged. The true nature of Enma's treasure was plain for all to see.
Fluffy's shoulders slumped in disappointment.
—
tsuzuku